Play the Game of Life
Ryan Petersen's Blog

We're ranked #82 in HR World's list of the top 100 management blogs. I don't think its in order from best to worse, but if it is, the female bloggers of the world need to stand up for themselves!

Last week, Columbia Business School hosted a panel entitled "The Mass Media in Transition: How Digital Technology and the Search for Content are Transforming the Industry."

Professor Jeremy Kagan cites ImportGenius.com as a company that has successfully leveraged new forms of media in its marketing strategy. I met him with him later that evening at happy hour in Greenwich Village, and he was stunned that he had mentioned my company without even realizing it was mine!

You can watch the video here.

Panelists:

Lisa Hsia (EMBA ’09) as Senior Vice President of New Media and Digital Strategy, Bravo, Lisa oversees Bravo's broadband properties, BravoTV.com and TelevisionWithoutPity.com, as well as Bravo's opportunities in emerging media, including wireless, interactive TV, electronic sell-through and VOD.

Jeremy Kagan (CBS Master Class faculty, Integrated Communication and New Media) and Vice President/Director of Strategy and Customer Insight for Publicis Modem, a leading digital advertising agency. He also owns and operates a music and event production company in New York City and Los Angeles, Underbelly.

David Rogers is the Director of the CBS Center on Global Brand Leadership, and has worked on strategic projects for brands in the IT, telecom, pharmaceutical, consumer packaged goods, entertainment, and media industries. He is the author of blogs, articles, and case studies on marketing in new media.

Sree Sreenivasan is the Dean of Student Affairs at Columbia University's Journalism School. He also serves as technology reporter for WNBC-TV in NYC and contributes occasionally to various NBC News programs such as The Today Show.

Moderator:

Ava Seave (CBS faculty) is a founder and Principal of Quantum Media, a consulting practice founded in 1998 that specializes in providing integrated business advice to media companies and media advice to non-media companies.

Labels: Columbia Business School, new media, Web marketing

Our search engine for international trade records received a glowing review on TechCrunch which was picked up by the Washington Post today.

Labels: entrepreneurship

The Columbia Business School Entrepreneurship Program recently asked me to answer a few questions about what it was like starting a business while during the MBA program.

1. Describe your business?

ImportGenius.com provides an online tool for searching international trade records to find out where your competitors buy each of their imported shipments and who your overseas suppliers sell to in the U.S. Businesses will pay a monthly fee to access the online tool. Initially we'll be primarily focusing on importers, distributors and manufacturers, but we're building analytics capabilities to make it into a powerful tool for private equity investors, stock analysts, and consulting firms.

The Web site went live in March 2008, half way through the semester.I am joining ImportGenius.com as its first full-time employee immediately following graduation, and expect to break even by the end of July.

2. How did the Greenhouse class help you?

During the Greenhouse Program, the whole business really crystallized to a degree I didn't think possible in such a short time. The professors were amazingly supportive when I decided to change my plans part-way through the semester. Originally I was working on the online furniture distributor that I ran before school, www.backrubhub.com. But when my brother offered me the opportunity to become a partner in ImportGenius.com, I couldn't let it slip. I think Cliff and Brendan realize that a true entrepreneur is somebody who can seize an opportunity when it comes along, so they really encouraged me to go for it. This meant scrapping a lot of what I worked on all semester and starting over from scratch. This would have been very difficult without their support.

Once I committed to ImportGenius.com, the program really helped me clarify my thinking about where our business can play within the broader field. The feedback from the professors, fellow students, and outside professionals was really valuable in determining the company's strategy. Almost everybody in the class offered me at least one idea for improving the ImportGenius value proposition. I also gained access to expert legal counsel who've helped with issues around incorporation. In developing a formal business plan and a pitch for potential investors and clients, my thinking really came together to a degree that would not have been possible under a less structured approach.

So often entrepreneurs end up isolated in their little corner of the world. The Greenhouse Program is really the seed for a deep-rooted network of connections within the New York entrepreneurial community. Having so many close friends who are starting businesses is going to provide incredible opportunities for learning and growth. Cliff and Brendan have both been great mentors for me, and I expect they'll be an important part of many of our companies for years to come.

3. What other CBS classes were helpful to developing your idea?

I came in to Columbia knowing that I would start a business on graduation, so in every class I was looking for how I could apply the concepts to a start-up. This not only helped me with the business planning, but also made the classes themselves more interesting. As it turns out, the most directly relevant in the near-term will probably be Entrepreneurially Selling. Professor Eric Baron's method of consultative selling is a refreshing departure from the pushy, "always be closing" approach we are all familiar with. I expect to be much more effective in focusing on my clients' needs as a result of his class.


4. What was it like launching your business while in school?

It was really tough. During the last few months, I wanted to work on this venture full-time, but there hasn't been the time. I'd already been an entrepreneur for several years before school, so I knew that I was going to start a business after I finished. When I got here I made the decision to put those plans on hold so that I could learn as much as possible, make tons of new friends, and get the most out of my business school experience. During this last semester as the end of the road got closer and closer, it became harder to focus on school. Although my grades didn't suffer, I had to really disengage from some of the clubs I was previously active in to make time for the new business launch.

5. How will you further your business over the summer?

My first job is to win a customers for the service. I'll be really active with outbound sales and marketing starting May 1st. I'll also be working closely with the development team to build out new tools within the application.

6. What advice do you have for upcoming CBS entrepreneurs?

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but a few things come to mind:

1) Bootstrap your business. It's never been cheaper or easier to start a new business. I've made a list of free/cheap tools you can use to launch any company. If your idea needs venture capital before you can even get going, try something simpler.

2) Look for positive feedbacks and network effects. Is there some way you can get your customers working for you in some kind of virtuous cycle?

3) Don't worry too much about barriers to entry. If there were barriers you wouldn't be getting into it. Operational effectiveness is everything.

4) Communicate with your customers in an authentic voice. Real conversations involve "listening" to what your customers are saying, online or offline!

I frequently post more tips on my blog, www.PlayTheGameOfLife.org, so maybe you’ll find something useful there (no promises).

7. Anything else you want to add?

I just want to say thanks to all the faculty and administrators in The Entrepreneurship Program and other parts of the school. Doing my MBA at Columbia was one of the most special things I've done in my life, so I need to express my gratitude to everybody who worked hard to make it so great.


Read the complete Q & A.

Labels: Columbia Business School, entrepreneurship

Columbia's Kayaking Club needs a few new undergraduate members to keep us going as an official club (actually, to reinstate us since we've been been banished for falling below the "4 undergrad officer" minimum). If you're a Columbia College student, please e-mail me to find out how to get involved. Grad students and alumni are welcome too, of course. There is a class for beginners and one for intermediates in Uris Pool during the Spring/Fall semesters.

Here's some videos from last weekend's trip to the Deerfield River, in the Berkshires (NW Mass).

This one's me, just good enough to be a hazard on the river...

Labels: columbia, kayaking

Import Genius is a Web application that allows you to search international trade records to find out where your competitors are buying their products overseas, as well as where your overseas suppliers are selling in the U.S. The company charges a monthly subscription service to businesses that want to access the customs database. I just took a job with the firm and started working this week, so if you are interested in accessing these kinds of reports, let me know.

Labels: entrepreneurship, international trade, job search, search engines

Building the Virtual Networked Business Models of the Future

(this was supposed to be a 2-page paper for a class on Managing Growth. I wrote 9 before I caught my breath)

by Ryan Petersen
Columbia Business School
MBA Class of 2008

Your customers are in control. The Web has taught them they can get whatever they want, exactly the way they want it, when they want it. And they want it NOW. Tomorrow is too late.

Customers "pulling" the specific products they want represents a radical departure from economic models of the past. Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, corporations have been in the business of producing huge quantities of product X and then "pushing" that product to customers through expensive sales and marketing efforts. Everything about today's organizational structures was designed to serve this model.

Economies of scale were king in the push economy: Huge factories pumped out standardized products as cheaply as possible; broad retail distribution networks put products in front of consumers wherever they shopped; marketing departments created print, television and radio advertisements to interrupt customers with their messaging; sales people knocked on doors and made phone calls to do the same; and MBAs were hired to optimize the entire process.

These organizational structures have not always been with us, however. Rather, they emerged in response to economic paradigm shifts of the past. Thomas McCraw, author of Creating Modern Capitalism, has identified three distinct industrial revolutions. The first arrived with the advent of steam and water power in the 17th and 18th centuries. Business ceased being a family affair as companies organized machines under the roofs of ever-larger factories, filled with hundreds or thousands of employees.

The second industrial revolution came about with the rise of electric utilities in the early 20th century. No longer requiring their own generators, factories could situate themselves closer to customers and labor supplies. Organizations adapted to the economics of cheap, plentiful power by organizing themselves around the assembly line, resulting in a dramatic productivity gains.

The third industrial revolution came about with the rise of mass communications and containerization in the aftermath of World War II. By spending huge amounts on television, radio and print advertisements, companies found they could create demand for the standardized products they churned out en masse. Successful firms began to organize around brands and global distribution networks. Those who were too slow to embrace the trends of branding and globalization quickly became inconsequential.

To execute global strategies behind standardized brands, companies needed new mechanisms of control. Much like the human body, businesses have traditionally organized around a central nervous system (the c-suite) that disseminates market intelligence and commands down to the corporation's muscles (line employees). To a greater or lesser degree, decisions are made at the top and executed at the bottom.

In Growing Pains, Eric Flamholtz and Yvonne Randle, identify three pure forms of organizational structure that have thrived in the push economy: (1) the functional structure, (2) the divisional structure, and (3) the matrix structure (Flamholtz, 190). To greater or lesser degrees, each of these structures greatly enhances top management's ability to control an organization.

Indeed, the central theme of Flamholtz and Randle's work on organizational structures is the need for managers to wield control. In this classical view, rational analysis by highly trained managers is the best way to allocate a firm's resources. Meanwhile, their arguments against more market-centric approaches like those found in the matrix organization center on the difficulty of coordination. Yet the rise of the empowered consumer demands that we push control all the way to the bottom--indeed, even outside the organization into the hands of customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. To do this, we need structures that provide for increased collaboration even at the expense of managerial control.

Throughout the three industrial revolutions, successful businesses of one era rarely made the transition to the next. More often the old companies gradually (or rapidly) faded into irrelevance as new businesses built upon new organizational structures rose to the forefront.

The rise of empowered consumers demanding exactly what they want, when they want it, represents a paradigm shift on the same order of magnitude as McCraw's three revolutions of the past. According to Seth Godin, "just ten years after the birth of the Web, New Marketing [i.e. the pull economy] has so fundamentally changed the dynamics of production and growth that the rules of the third revolution are no longer dominant" (Godin, 44). The traditional model of centralized control cannot adapt fast enough to meet the unique demands of so many individual customers.

Revolutionary new organizational structures--indeed, entirely new conceptions of the firm--are demanded. What might these new structures look like? One inspiring example can be found in a revolutionary new structure developed at SEMCO, a Brazilian manufacturing and services firm headed by Ricardo Semler.

Semler asserts that traditional businesses are built on "formats that are basically legacies of military hierarchies." Even the language we employ--words like strategy, mission, and corporate battles--are borrowed from this military tradition. In Semler's view, these structures neglect or deny the power of human intuition and democratic participation.

"We all find democracy to be a fundamental issue in our lives," he says. "We will send our sons anywhere in the world to die for it. We will not participate in a society where we can't choose our own [leaders]...but, I've never seen a democratic workplace. So it's very important for our lives, except where we spend 60% of our time."

For the past 25 years, Semler and his firm have embarked on a bold experiment in self-organization that eliminates hierarchies, organization charts, job titles, required meetings, corporate headquarters and many other trappings of traditional corporations. Employees select their own leaders--not in a required voting system, but through open discussions at voluntary meetings. They also choose their bosses and set their own salaries. In effect, he says to his workers:

"Don't cross town and get out of bed to come [to our offices]. We don't want to know how many hours you work. Let's contract for something you can do, and you do it anytime you can, anyhow you can. But it is a free market system, and it's unforgiving in some respects. Every six months, you've got to latch on to somebody's payroll. Everybody in the business unit together will write down the names of the people they think they need, and if you're on that list for enough people you have a job."

In addition to its employees on payroll, SEMCO also has more than 1,400 people in its business units who do not work for the firm, including 19 who work for their direct competitor. By putting the creative forces of self-organization and natural selection to work within the company, the firm has unleashed productivity gains that would be the envy of any business.

The net result has been 27% annual growth for the past 25 years during a period in which Brazil went through various cycles of inflation and hyperinflation, economic boom and bust. Semler recently told an audience at MIT Sloan, "The military legacy and...the analytical approach to management in a pyramidal structure is finished. That is anachronistic and if it's going to take 10, 15, or 40 years to go away, it doesn't matter, but it will be during your lifetime."

Semler's most remarkable achievement is his willingness to abandon his need for control. By setting his people free to collaborate with whomever they feel is useful to their specific task, whether inside or outside the firm, he has tapped into a wealth of human intuition and creativity unavailable to traditional firms.

Although SEMCO's democratic workplace remains the exception, examples abound of companies that are experiencing explosive growth as a result of giving up control over their products and processes.

Take Threadless.com, an online retailer of t-shirts. In the traditional push model, a t-shirt company--even one operating online--would hire a talented artist to design great shirts and then spend extensively to generate demand for these products. Instead, Threadless has created a platform for aspiring designers to submit their designs, and put these to a vote by customers. If your design wins, you get paid $1,500 and your t-shirt is produced. The company has quadrupled sales every year since 2001, reaching more than $20 million in 2007 (Godin, 61). They did this by embracing customer control and building an organization that empowers them even further.

A more well-known example of giving up control comes from the Google search algorithm. In the early days of the web, the primary way to find content was through manually edited directories run by firms like Yahoo. Then two Stanford engineers realized that by downloading the entire web onto their servers, and then analyzing all the links between the various web sites, they could actually turn every webmaster into a voter in a popularity contest. If a website received a lot of links from other websites, Google considers it important and ranks it highly.

In fact, Google has taken user participation in its search algorithm at least one step further, by incorporating the behavior of searchers themselves into the results. For example, if a large enough proportion of searchers for a particular term choose the 2nd result instead of the 1st, Google readjusts its rankings to reflect user preferences.

Like traditional media companies, Google earns its revenues by delivering advertisements. However, Google is very different in that each advertisement is tailored to the precise search term a customer types into its engine. In a sense, customers are "pulling" advertisements relevant to their needs in a particular moment.

Just as interesting, Google has taken steps to embrace worker self-organization through its human resources policies. Every employee is permitted to spend 20% of their time on any project they want, even in a completely different field or, in some cases, outside the firm altogether. At the same time, the company has created powerful tools for workers to share ideas about new projects and get feedback from their peers. The ideas that get the most votes attract resources, at first in the form of people's voluntary 20% time. If a project shows significant potential, management may decide to formalize the project with greater financial and engineering resources.

The company's leadership openly acknowledges that they don't know what direction the firm is heading. Instead, they just give their people the tools to develop great products and then get out of the way.

As soon as you give up your need for managerial control, outsourcing work to your customers makes an incredible amount of economic sense. Indeed, many traditional businesses are employing their customers without even knowing it. Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine, points out that every time you track a package on FedEx.com, you are actually doing work that used to be done by FedEx employees (Gibson, 256).

Meanwhile, Amazon's customers generate thousands of product reviews every single day, each of which enhances the shopping experience of other customers--people they don't even know. The result is increased customer loyalty and soaring profits. And they are doing it for free because Amazon empowered them do so.

These new organizational forms need not be constrained to for-profit enterprises. For example, the open source Linux and Apache operating systems now power the majority of web servers, the computers that send web pages to your browser every time you visit a web site. These programs were developed by ad hoc communities of software developers working for free because they found meaning in the work.
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Wikipedia has similarly created the world's largest encyclopedia on the backs of user contributions. By giving up editorial control, Jimmy Wales and his team harnessed the knowledge of millions of readers, who collectively know far more than any team of experts.

Kiva.org has raised millions for microfinance organizations by enabling donors in rich countries to provide micro-loans to entrepreneurs in the developing world. They did this without a marketing department, offices in the countries they serve, or direct contact with their donors. Rather, they let entrepreneurs tell their own stories, which are more authentic and inspiring than anything a corporate marketing department could put out.

In each of the preceding examples, we see a blurring of the lines between organizations and their customers, suppliers, and competitors. As these boundaries become less clear, a new conception of the firm is needed, one that can account for the dynamic, interconnected nature of the business world.

The militaristic perspective of the past must be replaced by the more accurate biological systems perspective. The biological systems framework not only creates a much more useful understanding of the corporation, it is also much more than mere analogy: Composed of human beings, businesses are biological systems in every sense.

As with any living system, companies are open systems that do more than simply take inputs from their environments and turn them into outputs. Much like biological organisms, as they process inputs and generate outputs, businesses are simultaneously creating their environments. In the natural world, it is meaningless to refer to competition between two organisms without taking into account the environment in which they exist. The winner will depend as much upon its inherited characteristics as upon the external factors provided by the environment. Those external factors, in turn, are co-created by all the various organisms within the network. What you have, then, is a competition between networks, rather than between organisms.

The significance of this analogy for the business world should not be overlooked. The future will be characterized by not competition between firms, in the traditional sense, but rather by competition between networks. Successful organizations will be those that can rapidly assemble team members and resources as project work demands. They will be flexible enough to quickly scale up to take advantage of opportunities or overcome challenges, and adaptable enough to scale down before cost pressure eliminates profitability.

As with successful genes in the natural world, successful business modules will be copied and spread widely, tested in new market environments and gradually adapted to local conditions. Unsuccessful modules will die out, though perhaps stored in somebody's mind (or computer database) for use in another situation at some future date.

In this biological model of the organization, there is no need to worry about whether a resource lies inside or outside the formal boundaries of your firm. What matters is whether they lie within your network where they can be brought together on short-notice when they are required.

Biological systems at all levels of complexity--from single-celled organisms to entire ecosystems--take on a life of their own with properties distinct from their constituent parts. These emergent properties arise as the result of the many local interactions of the system's components. In this light, corporate culture itself can be seen as an emergent property resulting from the countless interactions taking place between the members of an organization and its outside world.

While useful for developing a theoretical view of the firm, the biological systems view also generates actionable insights into creating high-performance cultures. To that effect, Robin Good and Ken Thompson have undertaken a systematic study of biological "teams" such as ant colonies and immune systems. These living systems manage to achieve incredible levels of coordination and productivity without advanced intelligence or centralized control. In the "Bioteaming Manifesto," they present a list of these characteristics, along with recommendations for how they can be applied to virtual networked business teams.

Most executives will acknowledge that technology often fails to provide promised productivity gains. Instead of the oft-heralded benefits of always-on connectivity, technology often becomes a time waster. Good and Thompson place blame a lack of norms, behaviors and beliefs properly adapted to the nature of virtual teams. They have therefore outlined twelve rules and seven beliefs that "bioteams"--biologically inspired virtual business teams--can adopt to achieve unheard of levels of coordination and productivity.

Unlike the rules of a traditional business environment, however, these cannot be driven from the top-down. Rather, they must emerge naturally from the bottom up collaboration of team members. Managers are no longer in control. Instead leaders--that means us!--will naturally emerge from within a team because of their ability to exert influence on team behaviors. We can do this in many ways, but the most likely candidate is, as always, leading by example.

Indeed, the first attribute itself is to "stop controlling." Good and Thompson argue that team members should communicate “situational information to team members who are trained to judge themselves what they should do in the best interests of the team.” No more command and control. Communicate what needs to be done and let them decide how.

The next attribute of high performance virtual teams is that all members take responsibility for identifying threats and opportunities. Team intelligence will be distributed, not driven from above. They argue that successful virtual teams must eliminate the "layers of permission" used by traditional teams to protect themselves from team member mistakes. "The only permission structures kept in place by a bioteam are those needed to protect the team against the potentially critical mistakes which would threaten the bioteam's own mission." In a virtual networked team, transparency and reputation are the basis for accountability.

Next the authors exhort us to "treat external partners as fully trusted team members." Partners should be chosen very carefully, but once admitted to a team, they should be granted full transparency and trust. Here they draw the analogy between the porous membrane of an organism, which accepts energy and useful inputs but keeps out poisonous toxins.

In a traditional team, the number of team members is decided in advance, and the group quickly scales up to achieve this optimal figure. Bioteams, on the other hand, acknowledge that they will never be able to calculate the optimal number in advance, and instead allow the growth of the team to rise or fall naturally as circumstances allow. The team should always be on the lookout for useful new members. Here the authors contend that successful teams must acknowledge their own lack of certainty, preferring to learn through "experimentation, mutation and team review" rather than through analysis.

While the lessons outlined above provide clear benefits to any virtual networked business team, Good and Thompson are also careful to acknowledge the key differences between human teams and other biological systems. Indeed, the differences themselves provide lessons that may be just as valuable in creating the dynamic business networks of the future.

The first difference is obvious to anybody who has compared ants and humans: We are much smarter than our six-legged counterparts. The important thing, according to Good and Thompson, is that "team members be able to self-select when to utilize personal 'intelligence' and critical thinking and when to rely on team intelligence before acting." While no team can achieve perfection in this area, trust built on experience working together, transparency, reputation and talent are key to achieving this level of self- and team-awareness.

The second critical difference is the subject of many religious tomes: between stimulus and response, humans are given free will. Because each team member can choose our response to a given set of circumstances, there is far more autonomy in the system, which may lead to less predictable results. Acknowledging that the actions that team members choose are the direct result of their beliefs, Good and Thompson identified the seven beliefs at the core of successful virtual cultures.

The beliefs shared by high performance virtual teams include clear and public accountability, trusted competency, give and take, total transparency, shared glory, meaningful mission value, and outcome optimism. Without these beliefs, virtual teams cannot succeed in mimicking high performance biological teams. However, with these beliefs in place, we can exceed the performance of even the best of today's human teams.

You needn't be a dot com superstar to take advantage of the attributes of biological teams to build a virtual networked business module. For example, in just four years, Wasauna.com has grown to be one of the leading suppliers of luxury bathroom fixtures--yes, toilets--in the U.S. In 2007 the firm sold more than $6 million of toilets, bathtubs, sinks and other 'old' economy products. They did this entirely through the Internet. Without showrooms or a strong dealership network, the firm is running circles around big name competitors like American Standard and Kohler.

How do they do it? Wasauna's management team has created a porous organizational membrane that can quickly assimilate team members with expertise the founders do not possess. They acknowledge their own core competency in web marketing and seek outside team members--whether employees, contractors or vendors--for everything else.

In addition to its ability to quickly assemble outside resources, Wasauna has taken advantage of nature's own form of generating creativity: the genetic algorithm. Before launching new products, traditional corporations appoint committees to size markets, analyze the competition, and build extensive cost-benefit analysis. Wasauna, on the other hand, relies on team member intuition and an acknowledgement that they will never really know what the market really wants until they try. So they roll-out competing products in parallel, as quickly and inexpensively as possible.

The result is a series of live controlled experiments that tighten the feedback loop with its market. As in natural selection, when a product is a hit, the company redoubles their efforts behind it. When a product is a dud, they learn from the lesson and move on--quickly.

In traditional corporations, on the other hand, analysis and optimization still rule. But while you can continue to optimize your products and processes, unless you are continually experimenting with radically new concepts, you are unlikely to make the shift to a paradigm-shifting new way of doing things. You may spend all your time climbing higher and higher, only to find you've reached the top of an ant hill, while Mount Everest looms on the horizon. Unless you step back, moving away from "optimization," you have no chance to find this new peak in the fitness landscape.

Successful business modules are those that constantly send scouts to feel out the landscape, testing new products, processes and ways of organization. While most experiments will fail, the success of one or two may give the company a chance to continue exploring.

The days of the military-inspired corporate pyramid are numbered. Markets are changing so fast that the commands coming down from the top start to bear little resemblance to the reality faced down below. The result is corporate dizziness. While many traditional corporations are taking advantage of the new forms of organization inspired by biological systems, far more will fail to make the shift. Extinction is a natural--indeed, necessary--part of evolution, so we should not lament their fall.

Instead, let this be a call-to-action for today's generation of entrepreneurs. The era of blundering corporate giants thriving on the production of average products for average consumers is rapidly coming to a close. To be sure, many good jobs will be lost in the process. But let historians find someone to blame for this. There is, in other words, no time for sympathy. Wel be too busy building new businesses, creating new jobs, and reinventing the very meaning of work.



Bibliography:

Beinhocker, Eric. The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What it Means for Society. Harvard Business School Press, 2006.

Brafman, Ori and Rod Beckstrom. The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. Portfolio Hardcover, 2006.

Capra, Fritoj. The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems. Anchor, 1997.

Carr, Nicolas. The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google. Norton, 2008.

Gibson, Rowan. Rethinking the Future: Business, Principles, Competition, Control & Complexity, Leadership, Markets and the World. Nicolas Brealey, 1997.

Godin, Seth. Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing Out of Sync?. Portfolio Hardcover, 2007.

Good, Robin and Ken Thompson. “The Bioteaming Manifesto” http://www.changethis.com/19.BioteamingManifesto, 2005.

McCraw, Thomas. Creating Modern Capitalism: How Entrepreneurs, Companies, and Countries Triumphed in Three Industrial Revolutions. Harvard, 1998.

Semler, Ricardo. “Leading by Omission.” Talk on December 11, 2005 at MIT Sloan School of Business. http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/308/

Semler, Ricardo. The Seven Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works. Portfolio Hardcover, 2004.

Labels: business, Columbia Business School, complex adaptive systems, complexity, entrepreneurship, organizations

The entrepreneur's guide to cheap (or free!) online tools to help you build the dynamically networked virtual businesses of the future.

oDesk.com - hire, manage and pay remote workers with a transparent, easy to use interface. Workers only get paid when they are logged into the system. And when they are logged in, you get access to actual screenshots at random intervals, along with a measure of keystroke activity throughout this time.

Basecamp HQ - get your team members' activities aligned with this cheap/free project management tool

eLance.com - similar to oDesk but without the tools for monitoring your workers activities in real-time.

Google Apps (gmail for your domain, wiki collaboration/corporate intranets, google docs, google spreadsheets, google calendar)

Google Adsense (earn revenue from your publishing assets)

Google Adwords (drive traffic to your site)

Google Analytics (monitor your web traffic to find the keywords, pages, visitor types that perform best)

Google Website optimizer (enhance your performance through multivariate testing)

Google Webmaster Tools (ensure Google is listing you properly in its index, find out who is linking to you, identify errors with your site)

Google Base - Product Search (get listed in product search results for free)

Google Local Business Center (get listed in local search results)

Blogger (publish a free online blog to promote your business)

Wordpress (a free online blog to promote your business--or even better, create a business out of blogging, generating ad revenue from AdSense)

Amazon Marketplace - list your products in Amazon's catalog. You can sign up for the Gold membership to add new products to the database for $40/month. Just sign up, add all your products at once, and then cancel the membership. You'll only be charged for one month. Once they are in the database, you don't need to be a Gold member to list them for sale!

Amazon S3 - unlimited data storage for very cheap.

Amazon Web Stores - run unlimited e-commerce sites for just $60 / month plus 6% sales commission (the commission is too high, but if you don't have the capability to build out your own secure e-commerce platform, this may be a great option)

eBay Stores - list all your products for just $0.02 each for a $40/month flat charge – note: these will NOT appear in standard ebay searches, so you'll need to run standard ebay listing promotions for 1 product at a time in each category. These will in turn drive traffic to your store's listings.

Magento.com - powerful open source e-commerce platform

Labels: entrepreneurship

If a single version of the meaning of life were universally understood and accepted, everybody would spend all their time pursuing the same thing. That would be tremendously boring. So perhaps there is no fixed meaning for all people precisely for that reason--to avoid making the world so bland. Taken one step further, perhaps that is the meaning of life itself: to avoid boredom and make things as interesting as possible.

It's an oddly circular argument that won't stand up to much logical analysis, but food for thought nonetheless.

Labels: inspiration

Stefano Casertano at Thinking Bits has a hilarious piece about this old parable on the African Savannah.

"Every morning in Africa, a Gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a Lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the Gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a Lion or a Gazelle. When the sun comes up, you'd better be running."

"First of all," he says, "Lions hunt at night. Only untalented lions, unable to get anything at night, would stay up in the morning to try get something to eat. Then, mostly female lions hunt. So the claim is only valid for "untalented female lions", to avoid generalizations.

"Second, Gazelles seldom run. They only do that when they see a threat; it is rarely represented by a lion. Most of the times it is a van packed with tourists and screaming kids. Gazelles like to perform other activities when they wake up, than start running like crazy. If they do such things, park guards would think they have gone nuts and would shoot them down."

Read the complete post, its great...

While we're on the subject, here is the single greatest wildlife video every filmed. It takes a while to develop, so be sure and watch the full seven minutes. You will not be disappointed.

Labels: Africa, safari

I just authored a post on the Columbia Business School blog about my plans for an entrepreneurial career. Columbia's new blog is an incredible platform for students and faculty at the school to share some of the amazing experiences we have everyday here in New York. From reports on guest visits by CEOs and entrepreneurs, to coverage of financial markets and and stories from student travel experiences, the blog is fast turning into one of the most engaging spaces on the net. No thanks to the fluff I manage to slip past the editors...

Labels: Columbia Business School

Thank you Phillipe, who notes that Tiger Leaping Gorge will not be dammed after all. Evidently the article I found (via Tiger Leaping Gorge's Wikipedia entry) is out-of-date.

Now I'm stuck, because this morning I decided that I was DEFINITELY going to the gorge during my China trip this summer. I'll probably still go, but now I can explore other options.

Labels: china, Tiger Leaping Gorge

The Chinese are planning on damming the Tiger Leaping Gorge. They are going to move 100,000 people out of this spectacular place, in the process destroying one of the truly successful models for eco-tourism in China.

This is one of my top 5 most gorgeous places on the entire planet, right up there with Machu Pichu and Iguazu Falls. What a stupid idea!

Labels: china, Tiger Leaping Gorge

Did you do well on the GMAT?

I've just launched a free online resource, GMATmastery.com, where I'll be sharing insights to help people get ahead on this test.

If you scored above 720 on the GMAT and would be willing to do a quick interview (either by email or phone) please e-mail me: rpetersen@gmail.com.



Thanks!

Labels: Columbia Business School, GMAT

Next week my brother and I will be attending Search Engine Strategies New York . The premiere search marketing industry conference, SES provides direct access to the world's most creative and influential figures in the search engine business.

In my view, attending this conference for 3-4 days will add far more value for my new businesses than a full month at Columbia Business School.

Labels: entrepreneurship, search engine marketing

Mike Michalowicz, CEO of Obsidian Launch, an incubator for young entrepreneurs, gave a talk this week about what it takes for entrepreneurs to succeed. Refreshingly, his talk was not about how to finance your venture, or the management and operational skills you'll require. Rather, Michalowicz focused on the entrepreneurial mindset, and how to get yourself to overcome limiting beliefs. Both his message and his delivery style both carried strong echoes of Tony Robbins, a man who's books have had a profound impact on my life.

Mike Michalowicz claims to read a book every two days, which would make him the only person I've met in a long time who reads more books than me. CNBC has posted Mike's list of "Top Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read," which I've cut and pasted below. Also, here's a video of Mike on CNBC courtesy of Google Video.

If you're looking for a coach in getting your new business started, Mike and Obsidian Launch might be just what you need.




From CNBC,

The Starfish and the Spider - By: Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom – This book clearly identifies the changing pattern in successful business launch and management strategies. They show how to build a dynamic powerful business, and it is easier and less conventional than you think.
Small Giants – By: Bo Burlingham – The title says it all, small business is the new big business.
The E-myth Revisited - By: Michael Gerber - The new entrepreneur's bible!
Mastering the Rockefeller Habits - By: Verne Harnish - Strategies for rapid growth.
Get The Edge - By: Anthony Robbins - You gotta have the right mindset to succeed. Read this!
The 4-Hour Workweek - By: Timothy Ferriss - Takes the E-Myth and applies tips & tricks.
Automatic Millionaire - By: David Bach - In short a "401K" for all parts of life.
Raising the Bar - By: Gary Erickson - A grassroots entrepreneur story through and through.
Purple Cow - By: Seth Godin - This book is remarkable! You'll get the joke when you read it.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad - By: Robert Kiyosaki - Make money, don't blow it.Motivational!
The Art of the Start - By: Guy Kawasaki - Key insights to starting a company.
Made to Stick - By Chip & Dan Heath - Marketing your company the right way.
Good to Great - By Jim Collins - The modern classic entrepreneurs book. A mandatory read.
How to Win Friends and Influence People - By: Dale Carnegie - Written years ago, but even more relevant today.

Labels: books, Columbia Business School, entrepreneurship

Columbia Professor Michael Feiner has a great post about managing e-mail overload. His advice is solid, although a bit more conservative than the innovative "batching" solution put forth by Tim Ferriss, author of the Four-Hour Workweek.

Feiner's top five tips:

1. Set some ground rules to help employees decide which conversations should be handled via email and which should be handled face-to-face or phone-to-phone.

2. Restrict your email to a certain number per day per person.

3. Don't use email for those occasions when you're trying to motivate, inspire, galvanize or energize.

4. Ask an admin to vet emails and try to handle the less important ones themselves, passing on the most important ones to you.

5. If the matter being discussed is urgent, put "urgent" on it -- and if this is a crisis, and you really need an answer immediately, put that in the subject line. Sometimes people cheat with this, but even if people are playing it straight 70 percent of the time, this will very often get you to the most critical emails during the day, and the others you can defer.

Labels: Columbia Business School, e-mail

Della Bradshaw's second article about my trip to Nigeria just came out in today's Financial Times.

I've also got a new post on the Columbia Business School blog out today.

Labels: Africa, Columbia Business School, Nigeria

Over the past decade, leading African business schools have adopted the traditional case method. But how much can students really learn from these cases when they are about American companies that routinely leave Africa out of their operating plans altogether?

So during winter break, I was one of 30 CBS students who traveled to Africa to write case studies about successful entrepreneurial businesses on the continent. (See previous posts here and here.)

Our goal was to develop a world-class business school case study about Computer Warehouse Group (CWG). This project presented the opportunity to dispel the myth that there are no sophisticated businesses on the African continent--or worse, that businesses there can only get ahead through corruption.

We knew only that the firm had experienced explosive growth over the past few years, achieving some $100 million in revenues in 2007. We knew the firm was an early reseller for Dell, and that it was an important partner for a variety of blue chip Silicon Valley firms, including Cisco, Sun Microsystems and Oracle. We understood CWG's strategy to position the firm as a strategic partner capable of delivering turn-key IT solutions for big companies, and we knew that a well-known global private equity fund had made an offer to purchase a minority stake in the company.

And until we got to Lagos, we didn't have any sense of this company's culture. Was it a one-man show, heavily dependent on its charismatic founder, Austin Okere? Or did it have people and processes in place to ensure continued growth into the future? Did employees at the bottom live the values expressed by those at the top? Or was it more of a show to impress customers, potential investors or other stakeholders?

To answer these questions about the company's culture, we interviewed dozens of employees, from the most senior management to the most junior customer service and sales teams.

As it turned out, we couldn't have picked a better company to lay these stereotypes to rest. The company has thrived in difficult circumstances because of an entrepreneurial culture that embodies the work ethic, personal responsibility and integrity of its founder. The firm has distinguished itself from the competition by consistently delivering on promises to customers and is one of Nigeria's 50 fastest growing companies.

A rep from Cisco told us that the firm is "probably the most entrepreneurial company in Nigeria, certainly in the most entrepreneurial in IT sector." The founder of the competing firm, who has since sold his business to a larger international player, expressed similar respect for his former rivals.

Labels: Africa, Columbia Business School, entrepreneurship, Nigeria

There is nothing more dangerous in an organization than to be right. The minute you're right, you don't have to change. -- Irving Borwick, Systems Thinking Consultant

Labels: complex adaptive systems, organizations

The non-profit just scored major grants from the Gates Foundation and Google.org. The chairman, Paul Tierney Jr. (who is one of my professors at Columbia) told me that after all these years of asking everybody for money, he finally feels like they have all they need to carry out their mission. But he is also feeling the pressure to scale up fast!

Paul will be giving a talk about TechnoServe's initiatives and their recent fund-raising success at Columbia Business School on February 21st.

Please contact me if you'd like to attend.

Labels: Columbia Business School, entrepreneurship, social enterprise

Today Columbia Business School launched Public Offering, a new community blog for the students and faculty of the school. I was honored to be asked to write the first student post on the blog about my current project in Nigeria. We're here in Lagos writing a case study about Computer Warehouse Group, Nigeria's leading IT systems integration company. Our project was mentioned in a Financial Times article about Columbia's Entrepreneurship in Africa class on Monday.

Labels: Africa, Columbia Business School, entrepreneurship, Investing in Africa

I paid a couple of local guys $1.00 to show me how to climb to the top of this waterfall--and to jump at the same time so I could be sure it was deep enough to survive!

Labels: Africa, Benin, video, West Africa

Cape Coast Castle, one of the largest and best preserved slave forts on the coast of Africa.



Osu Castle, a former slave trading fort as well as the seat of British Colonial rule in Ghana, is now the office of the country's presidents.

A few interesting (and haunting) things about the slave castles, giant forts built by the Europeans to protect their slave trading dominions along the coast of West Africa:

The forts were built more to defend against rival European powers (the Dutch, Portuguese, English, French and Danish were all active along Ghana's coast at various points in time).

To stamp out insurrectionist sentiment, the Europeans locked up uncooperative slaves in a dungeon, where they would be left without food or water until they died. The corpses were not removed until the last person had died. You can still see scratch marks where dying slaves attempted in vain to claw their way out of the dark cells. Naturally other slaves were employed to remove the dead bodies. The message got through, I've no doubt.

Slaves were purchased from local traders primarily in exchange for rifles. Using these arms, the slave raiders would have little trouble overcoming villages in the interior to capture more slaves.

In both of the slave castles we visited, Elmina and Cape Coast, the primary slave dungeon are located directly beneath the forts' chapels. Indeed, the first Christian church in Ghana is the chapel above the Elmina slave dungeon.

In Elmina, the governor had a special viewing balcony that allowed him to pick out the most beautiful slave girls and bring them up through a private staircase through a trap door to his bedroom.

Labels: Ghana, slavery, West Africa

Columbia Business School's new master class, "Entrepreneurship in Africa," could just as well have been called, "Optimism about Africa." Lead by professors Paul Tierney, Jr. and Murray Low, a diverse mix of thirty-five graduate students spent the fall semester studying the current climate for doing business on the African continent.

Throughout the semester, we were visited by an impressive array of entrepreneurs, investors, and non-profit directors. Each shared their experiences from years of doing business on the continent, along with their outlooks for the future. The consensus is overwhelmingly positive: time and again we've been told that Africa lies on the cusp of an economic boom the likes of which it has never experienced before.

As experienced Africa-hands, many of our guest speakers offered sage advice as we work to produce business school case studies about successful African entrepreneurs. In January, all thirty-five students will be traveling in teams of five to complete the case study in Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria or South Africa. Upon completion, the cases will be made available to African business schools, where they will provide more locally relevant points of departure for classroom discussion.

The Entrepreneurship in Africa course grew out of a broader initiative led by Columbia Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard to link the school more closely to the African continent. Hubbard believes that Columbia can best help people in Africa by focusing on what we do best--educating the next generation of African business leaders.

To do this, we have partnered with the African Association of Business Schools, a network of top African business schools to identify and address their most pressing needs. Columbia professors, including Murray Low and Charles Calomiris, have led seminars for African professors to improve their ability to lead students through the “case” method of participatory learning.

As this initiative progressed, it quickly became apparent that the case method would be rather ineffective without cases relevant to local contexts. Our course was created with the dual goals of providing Columbia students with greater insight into the opportunities of doing business in Africa and creating a series of exceptional business school cases about world-class African companies. In doing this, we hope to dispel the myth that African businesses and their leaders are somehow less sophisticated than their counterparts in the rest of the world.

My own team is working with Lagos-based Computer Warehouse Group, the largest IT systems integrator in West Africa. We'll visit with many of the company's employees in Nigeria, including founder Austin Okere, as we chart the firm's success over the past two decades. With no substantial sources of external financing, the company has now reached $100 million in revenues from a client base including some of the world's biggest brands. Stay tuned to FT.com for an update from our team's trip to Nigeria in mid-January.

As the first trip to Africa for many in the class, it affords the opportunity to see for ourselves which is closer to reality, the hopeful picture of robust economic growth painted by African business leaders and New York investment professionals or the bleak image of nations devastated by poverty, disease, corruption and conflict presented by the mainstream media.

In this sense, our class offered a deeper perspective on the backlash against the more conventional view of Africa--a movement whose epicenter can be found in the now annual TED Africa Conference. Indeed, we were even fortunate enough to share the same kick-off speaker as last June's conference in Tanzania, Euvin Euvin Naidoo of Standard Chartered Bank and the South Africa Chamber of Commerce Americas.

Naidoo is quick to point out that although AIDS, corruption and armed conflict remain serious impediments to Africa's potential, these are not the most interesting stories emerging from the continent. Rather, what fascinates him most are the now common stories of resourceful entrepreneurs with the tenacity to build thriving businesses within this context.

For at least the past five years, the majority of Africa's economies have experienced GDP growth almost twice as high as here in the U.S. To large degree, this growth has been built on foundations of expanded democracy and improved governance. As the first two generations of post-colonial leaders have finally begun to fade from the scene, there is evidence that many of the new governments are committed to economic liberalization and public-sector reform.

Although the run-up of commodities prices over the last few years can account for much of Africa's growth, sectors outside of natural resource are also booming. Scalable businesses in the telecommunications, construction, consumer lending, and retail sectors are appearing across the continent. For the first time since independence, international investors are actively seeking business plans targeting domestic markets as opposed to exports.

With a growing track record of steady economic growth across the continent, foreign direct investment is surging. Among those attracted by domestic consumer markets is Kofi Bucknor, managing director of Kingdom Zephyr, a joint venture between the private equity firm Zephyr Management and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia. The group's first fund, Pan-African Investment Partners, realized returns greater than 300% over just a few years by investing in banking and cellular communications companies on the continent.

During a recent visit to New York to raise the firm's new $500 million fund, Bucknor provided our class with a unique opportunity to hear his pitch to investors first-hand. His strategy is relatively simple: By providing growth capital, improved corporate governance, managerial expertise, and access to managerial expertise, his fund can transform loosely managed start-ups into more professionalized enterprises with the discipline to deliver consistent results. If it weren't for the $5 million minimum buy-in, he almost certainly would have left the session with a fistful of checks.

Simon Harford, CEO for West Africa of Actis Capital, a UK private equity firm, helped put these inflows of private capital into perspective. He pointed out that investments from foreign companies are already beginning to dwarf aid money from the UN and loans from the World Bank. Harford characterized Nigeria's current economic boom as perhaps the greatest investment climate since independence.

Later Sev Vettivetpillai, CEO of Aureos Capital, a global private equity firm with several offices in Africa, believes investments in the $5-10 million range are most appropriate for the African context. Where private equity funds aiming for larger deployments will find it increasingly difficult to find attractive acquisition targets, he believes Aureos will have access to more high quality deal-flow.

Meanwhile, according to Jon Chew and Mark Tunmer of Botswana-based Imara Holdings, fund managers are increasingly attracted to African markets because they represent one of the last asset classes not correlated to global markets. Stock markets in Africa have continued marching along unconcerned by the sub-prime fallout that has roiled markets across the globe. Although this is an attractive feature for institutional investors, the duo were quick to point out that as more funds flow into the market, it will become increasingly difficult for them to deploy their capital in ways that make sense.

Perhaps the speaker with the most intriguing--if a bit idiosyncratic--opportunity in Africa is Ben Howell, manager for emerging markets of the Houston-based hedge fund HBK. His firm has purchased a minority stake in Clark Sustainable Resource Developments, a Canadian venture that is logging the hardwood forests submerged beneath Ghana's massive Lake Volta. Since 1965, a forest of pristine old-growth hardwoods has been submerged in some 100 feet of water thanks to the construction of the Akosombo dam. By harvesting the trees with technology from the off-shore oil industry, Howell and CSRD believe they may be able to supply some 20% of the world's environmentally certified hardwoods.

During another session, Scott Malpass, Chief Investment Officer for the University of Notre Dame, presented his view of Africa from his perspective as the manager of one of the largest university endowments. Malpass has realized unprecedented success in growing his school's assets through a strategy of diversifying into emerging markets, particularly China and India. The recent success stories out of Africa have not gone unnoticed, however, as he is actively seeking to move a larger portion of his $X billion under management into the region.

In addition to an impressive line-up of business chiefs, we were also fortunate to host several leaders of non-profit groups. Bruce McNamer, President of TechnoServe, told us about his organization's decades-long effort to help entrepreneurs on the continent move up the value chain. We looked closely at TechnoServe's successful efforts to boost the prices received by a Tanzanian coffee cooperative. McNamer was one of many speakers to stress that nearly every African is an entrepreneur at heart, eager to seize opportunities wherever they may be found.

Antony Mwaniki, CEO of Mobile4Good.com, shared his experiences leading a start-up that uses cell phone text messaging to match job-seekers with employers in Nairobi, Kenya. Leveraging technology to help people find employment, his company aims to be profitable while addressing a societal challenge. Funded by Jim Harmon, a New York investor looking for a meaningful avenue to contribute to Kenya's economic development, Mobile4Good is the perfect example of a new, more productive replacement for traditional philanthropy. The venture's backers echo the sentiments of NYU economist William Easterly, journalist Andrew Mwenda and others who argue that its time to rethink our approach to foreign aid.

Perhaps the most inspiring story to emerge from the class came from Isaac Shongwe, a black South African who scored a coveted scholarship to attend an American university in 1989. He later earned a Rhodes scholarship, completing his MBA at Oxford and returning to his native country where he has become a leader in Black Economic Empowerment financing.

Shongwe showed how the combination of humility, brilliance and determination can lead to success in even the most difficult of circumstances. It is with precisely this entrepreneurial spirit that our class now departs for Africa.

Labels: Africa, business, Columbia Business School, entrepreneurship, Investing in Africa

The primary interaction of most West Africans with their state appears to come through shakedowns at random police checkpoints. We've found these roadblocks in our path every hour or so all the major roads in Ghana, Benin and Togo. Heavily armed officers interrogate drivers and search vehicles, ostensibly in search of drugs and guns. Locals say these roadblocks are necessary because of the huge inflows of drugs from Nigeria in recent years. Yet it seems clear that the cops are just hoping to find a violation of some pety regulation so they can extract a bribe.

Oddly, during our traverse from the Burkina Faso border to the coast of Benin, we crossed eight roadblocks, each with officers boasting completely different uniforms. The first few times we encountered the mix-matched uniforms, I thought we were about to be robbed by a gang of armed thugs posing as cops. Ultimately when they saw that we were white, they let us go after asking if we have "tried" Beninoise girls, telling us they want to go to America, or making some other comment humourous only because it came from a guy with an AK-47.

I'm told that having a nice car will get you past these checkpoints without problem, because they assume you may be important and don't want to risk getting in trouble. When did these roadblocks come about? Besides reducing travel times and speeding commerce, what would happen if they were eliminated? What percentage of a police officer's income comes from petty bribes at these checkpoints rather than through their salaries? Is there some other way to control contraband besides random searches of all travelers? And why do West African countries have customs checkpoints at random locations deep in their interiors?

Labels: Benin, corruption, Ghana, Togo, West Africa

Studies show that people regret their failures to act far more than actions actually taken, but that they predict that they will regret actions more than inactions (See Stumbling on Happiness, by Dan Gilbert, page 197).

The implication?

Do something courageous today. Ignore that inner voice telling you that you'll regret it. It's almost certainly wrong.

Labels: courage, psychology

Driving through the north of Benin, the only intensive economic activity you're likely to see is cotton production. Indeed, cotton accounts for 40% of GDP, which was measured at $1,200 per capita in 2004.

We passed dozens of overloaded cotton trucks just like these in our seven days in the country.

Labels: Africa, Benin, cotton, economics, West Africa

You have already crammed nine guys into a car with five seats. You have already loaded 100 pounds worth of clothes, flour and other merchandise on the roof of the car. So what are you going to do with the twenty live turkeys you promised you would deliver to market by this afternoon?

In Benin, the solution would be obvious:

Labels: Africa, Benin

George Bush recently visited Cotonou, Benin. Something tells me he didn't wander far enough from the airport to experience the city's bustling Danktopa marketplace. The most ridiculously chaotic place I've ever seen. According to Wikipedia, the market has a turnover of $1 billion CFA ($2.26 million) per day--mostly on transactions under $5!

Here are a few pics of the harbor at the north end of the market, where thousands arrive via boat every hour to do their shopping.

For a better taste of just how wild this place is, watch a few of my videos from another section of this market.

Labels: Africa, Benin, West Africa